Posts Tagged ‘hate crime’

A gang of youths used hammers and blocks in an attack on the walled-off Jewish section of a cemetery in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Friday, local media reported. Seventeen Jewish graves were destroyed and vandalized in the organized attack inside the cemetery. The Police Service of Northern Ireland is investigating the incident as a hate crime. Some of the graves date back to the 1870s.

Bishop Noel Treanor, head of the Irish diocese of Down and Connor, said that “these shameful acts are a blemish on our society.”

“What a tragedy and blemish then that the long-present, beloved and treasured Jewish families of our community should suffer yet again such actions of disrespect, violence to the memory of their beloved dead and the regrettable outworking of a latent xenophobia that stalks the minds of some,” Bishop Treanor said.

The Most Reverend Noel Treanor Bishop of Down and Connor / Photo credit: Youtube Screenshot

Inspector Norman Haslett of the PSNI said the attack was “a particularly sickening incident, which we are treating as a hate crime,” stressing that “to disturb the sanctity of a cemetery in this way is completely unacceptable and I can assure the public that we will conduct a robust investigation.”

Speaking at St Peter’s Cathedral in Belfast, the Bishop said: “As a society, as neighborhoods and communities, we must honestly consider if we harbor attitudes that are negative to those whom we too easily classify as ‘foreigner,’ rather than see them as sisters and brothers in Christ and in humanity.”

Well, that was a little embarrassing. But he meant well.

“As a society, we need to build co-operation between our homes and schools to ensure that our children are educated in heart and attitude, in mind and action, to respect every person without exception,” Bishop Treanor continued, suggesting that “as we build here in Northern Ireland a society fit and able to accommodate the contemporary reality of the mobility of peoples, willing to cherish the multi-cultural and multi-faith mosaic that is every contemporary society generally and in its most local communities and neighborhoods, there can be no compromise on these imperatives to build minds and hearts that are open to, respectful of and treasure diversity.”

Philipp Justus, managing director of the German unit of YouTub’s parent company Google, on Monday received a letter from the World Jewish Congress (WJC), demanding he remove illegal material praising Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust. In the letter, released by news agencies, WJC Executive Vice President Robert Singer is asking, “Why is it that Google steadfastly refuses to take action against the proliferation of racist and anti-Semitic material on its platforms? Do you really believe that songs glorifying or inciting the mass murder of Jews fall under freedom of speech?”

Singer highlighted one exceptionally revolting song among many nasty numbers, “In Belsen,” by the neo-Nazi group Kommando Freisler, whose members received suspended jail terms in 2009 for inciting racial hatred. According to Singer, the despicable song is “widely available” on YouTube despite its banning in Germany.

In September, the director of the memorial at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Jens-Christian Wagner already asked YouTube to remove “In Belsen.” Wagner’s letter received no response, until last Saturday, when Germany’s biggest daily newspaper, Bild, reported it, and then most versions of the song were deleted from YouTube. But dozens of equally hateful Kommando Freisler and other neo-Nazi bands’ songs are still available online in “thousands of clips,” according to WJC spokesman Michael Thaidigsmann.

“It is obvious that Google/YouTube does not seriously deal with this matter, that it lacks any proactive attitude, and that even when offensive posts are being flagged, it is very slow to remove the incriminating files from its service,” Thaidigsmann said, adding bitterly, “If I post something from Adele or Taylor Swift, you can bet it’ll be gone in a few hours.”

A spokesman for YouTube’s German unit told AFP his employers have “clear guidelines to ban hate speech against certain groups or content that incites racial hatred. We remove all videos that violate these guidelines as soon as they are reported. That also applies to banned right-wing extremist music.”

And so it appears the problem lies either with the anti-hate guidelines or with the German YouTube employees who are supposed to follow them.

by Michael Bachner/TPS The Jerusalem District Court convicted Yosef Chaim Ben David, 29, on Tuesday morning of the abduction and murder of Jerusalem Arab teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014. The teen was on his way to a mosque in his neighborhood, Shuafat, when he was kidnapped. The incident rattled the region and played a key role in escalating the tensions leading up to the summer war in Gaza.

Ben David, from the community of Adam, was the central suspect in the murder, along with two minors. His verdict was delayed by several months to determine his mental state, following claims by his lawyers that he was mentally ill and not responsible for his actions.

The court, however, ruled that Ben David “was not in a psychotic state, fully understood what he was doing, had control over his actions and had the ability to refrain from committing the crime.”

Abu Khdeir was 16 years old when he was abducted and burned alive in Jerusalem by the three Israeli Jews. The murderers claimed they wanted to avenge the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teens by Hamas terrorists just days earlier. The two atrocities sent tensions soaring between Israelis and Arabs from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, culminating in the IDF’s 2014 Gaza campaign, Operation Protective Edge.

Ben David’s two nephews, 16 and 17 years old, were convicted in January of committing the murder along with him. One of them received a life sentence. The other was sentenced to 21 years in prison after the court ruled that he played a lesser role in the murder.

Before the verdict, Abu Khdeir’s father Hussein called on the Israeli government to demolish the homes of his son’s murderers, in keeping with Israeli policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinian Authority terrorists. “We need justice from the court,” he said. “These murderers should have their homes demolished. Such people cannot be granted parole. He needs to serve a life sentence.”

Following the conviction, the state prosecution released a statement saying that Ben David committed the murder “out of nationalistic vengeful motives, also dragging his underage relatives with him who participated in the heinous crime and were sentenced to many years behind bars.”

In the Palestinian Authority and in Gaza, people celebrate the murders of Israeli Jews, honking car horns and passing out sweets to strangers in the streets when an attack has taken place.

Public squares, special events and streets are named for especially “successful” terrorists so their deeds will be remembered and glorified for future generations.

Vandals spray-painted a swastika on a statue outside an Olympia, Washington synagogue, and an anti-Semite punched an Orthodox Jewish student in the face in two high-profile hate attacks in the United States this week.

The college student was treated on the scene, with the help of a Muslim woman student. The attacker fled.

A swastika is not mere vandalism — it is a symbol of hatred with deep resonance with Jews and shakes us to our core, especially in a community in which we are constantly reminded of our minority status.

The incident at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College occurred when an unidentified black man bumped into an Orthodox Jewish student from behind. When the student turned around, the attacker punched him twice in the face and stomach while snarling at him for being “white and Jewish.”

College President Rudy Crew seemed to be thrilled at the chance to be politically correct and boast how a Muslim helped an Orthodox Jew.

He said:

The fact that a Muslim woman came to the defense of an orthodox Jewish man is a true reflection of the values that permeate this great institution.

Is it really such a tremendous event in the United States when a Muslim helps a Jew?

The FBI has foiled a plot by two white men to kill Jews and blacks in synagogues and churches.

Canine dogs and 15 police cars raided the home of one of the suspects, Ronald Beasley Chaney, and arrested him and his partner Robert Curtis Doyle. An accomplice, Charles Haldeman, also was arrested.

The FBI received a tip in late September that the two had scheduled a meeting to discuss a plot to bomber or shoot at Jews and blacks in houses of worship in Virginia and a gun dealer in Oklahoma. They had said they wanted to start a race war.

The FBI placed them under surveillance and used three undercover agents who agreed to sell them weapons and explosives.

They are to be arranged in a Richmond, Virginia court on Thursday for charges of conspiracy to possess firearms.

Doyle previously has been convicted for drug possession, embezzlement and theft.

Frazier Glenn Cross, the white supremacist who killed three non-Jews at two Kansas City Jewish centers in August, yelled “Heil Hitler” at the Tuesday hearing in which his death sentence was upheld.

Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan affirmed the jury’s decision to send Cross to the death chambers. The 74-year-old white supremacist was evicted from the courtroom for his outburst and ended up watching to end of the trial on closed-circuit television.

Cross, known as Glenn Miller, also was sentenced to 394 months in jail for on various charges.

Relatives of the victims of the shooting spree at the Jewish Community Center and at a Jewish retirement community spoke during Tuesday’s trial.

Cross, acting as his own lawyer, made several motions for a new trial, two of his arguments being that he was the victim of unfair media coverage and that he could not speak when he wanted.

He also argued that Judge Ryan made gestures to “let the jury know he was on the side of conviction.”

Cross exposed his twisted mind by stating that he shouldn’t be sentence to death because all in all, he killed the wrong people and not Jews.

One relative of Cross victim’s said at the hearing:

Cross has said had wanted to murder as many Jews as possible because they have ‘too much power.’

He also said that because of his chronic emphysema, he doesn’t think he has much longer to live.

(JNi.media) Police are searching for individuals who carved anti-religious hate messages and large swastika on cars in a parking lot outside an apartment complex on the University of California Davis campus last Saturday. CBS interviewed Matthew Davidson, who snapped a picture of a large swastika keyed into the hood of 11 cars, along with the message “[Expletive] Jews.”

“It’s just shocking for me as a Jew to see such hatefulness right outside my doorstep,” Davidson said. His roommate’s tire was slashed, which she only discovered after getting onto the freeway. “It jeopardized her life,” he told CBS. “She was on the freeway and her car in danger, and everyone in the car in danger.”

“I am deeply troubled and disappointed that the campus community has experienced another incident that included damaged property and, even more grievously, offensive and disparaging slurs,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a statement. “This is conduct most unbecoming and completely against our principles of community.”

Last January, swastikas sprayed in red paint on the home of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi at UC Davis. A coalition of students and campus organizations condemned the act, declaring that “anti-Semitism, along with all other forms of hate, including, but not limited to, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny, still exist and are rampant trans-nationally and on our university campuses.” Since then there have been at least two more anti-Semitic acts, but no expressions of Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, or misogyny.

Chancellor Linda Katehi also stated that “each of us has a responsibility to build and maintain a culture and climate based on mutual respect and caring. No matter what religious, political or personal beliefs we hold, as members of a university community we have an obligation to treat each other with respect and dignity.”

Still, it appears that of all the many religious, political and personal beliefs, so far only Jews have been targeted.